1st Class Secretarial Services Blog

As manager of a transcription team, providing audio typing services to our wide range of clients on a daily basis, every day is different! I work closely with our home based team of ever expanding transcriptionists and have daily discussions with them on their availability for the day and week ahead in order to place the work coming in from our clients. Having gauged from the client the content of their files, participants’ accents and their style requirements, I work out which transcriptionist would best suit the needs of the client, the content of the files and place the work within the client’s required turnaround time whilst also allowing our Quality Control Manager the time to verify each document that passes through our website.

It’s always a busy start to the morning, checking what files have come in, making a note of them, checking quality, regional accents and totalling minutes to be ready to send out to the 1st Class team! I love the fact that our transcriptionists are spread all over the UK and I get a daily insight into the weather and happenings in their lives and feel like we’re really part of a team. I always make an effort to note where they go on holidays, their kids names and even their dogs as this seems to be our daily conversation – I think working from home can be quite isolated so it helps them feel as if they have a connection with a team and in turn building that relationship with them and getting to know them helps me place the audio files we receive from clients with the right transcriptionist.

All in all, I love the variety of everyday managing the workflow and ensuring deadlines are met whilst dealing with existing and new clients. No two days are the same. One day we can be transcribing cancer research interviews to PACE interviews to witness statements, with content varying from Art to Alzheimer’s! We encourage the use of Google and try to build up glossaries for each client based on feedback from our transcriptionists.

Good organisational skills are an essential part of my job and keeping an overall eye on the client’s requirements and turnaround times. I work closely with our office based head transcriptionist and ensure all files pass through our Quality Control Manager for proofing. Weekly meetings ensure we keep up to date with our policies and procedures and discuss feedback we’ve received from clients and our team of typists. As our turnaround times vary from same day to five to ten days it’s essential to have the support of my team to meet these deadlines.

Transcription services provide a valuable resource for universities to solicitors to small businesses alike as outsourcing the work not only saves time but also saves costs as we charge per recorded minute. It’s a stress-free way of outsourcing your admin and at 1st Class we are happy to help.

When you are providing transcription services it is critical that you proofread your work carefully. You want to make sure to give your client the absolute best, most accurate transcript you possibly can so that they know they can depend on your work product. Proofreading is an art. It takes practice and the willingness to focus on small details. Transposed letters, misplaced punctuation marks, and letter substitutions are just three of the possible errors you may discover while proof reading.

Having a two-tier quality check on all transcripts ensures that the transcript complies with transcription guidelines, standards of style and formats of practice.

Upon completion, the transcriptionist will proof read their work word for word, correcting any typos, unclear words, errors or omissions, missing words, incorrect punctuation, jumbled grammar, misspellings –so many little things can sneak by you while you are typing and it’s amazing what you will find when you go back through and proofread your own work. A transcriptionist should assume the manuscript will have at least a few minor mistakes, such as transposed letters or a missing punctuation mark. Sometimes you may leave letters off of words, creating completely different words: ‘I’ instead of ‘is’, ‘or’ instead of ‘for’, ‘you’ instead of ‘your’ and also one which was quite recent, a howler, ‘Despondent’ instead of ‘Respondent’! These are all common mistakes. They may seem like little insignificant typos, but they make the difference between a good transcript and an excellent transcript.

By having the document verified by someone independently of the original transcriptionist, you are ensuring that the transcriptionist has followed the written instructions as regards template, identifiers and any other special written instruction. If the transcript is to be verbatim, a total and accurate record of everything that is said must be included, so this is a check that all non speech events are in square brackets such as [laughs] [coughs] etc, as well as ensuring that all “ums”, “ers”, hesitations and false starts are also included, although the most common transcripts are usually intelligent verbatim where all non speech events are left out.

The verifier should then listen carefully and check the first two pages of the document, the middle two pages and the last two to see that the sound file corresponds with the transcript. If the audio was very clear you probably do not need to proof to the audio, but only need to spot check any “inaudibles” that you may find as you read through the transcript and of course constantly checking throughout the transcript to ensure that the correct grammar and punctuation have been used.

You can then carefully go back through the document and make the changes that you find need to be changed. So, you can be sure when you get your final proofread transcript, it will be the highest quality transcript offered, and it will be free of spelling, formatting, and grammatical errors as well.

A properly written, edited and presented text projects a professional image. Taking the time to proofread properly is a worthwhile investment on any company’s time and so increasing a firm’s professionalism.

There are two major reasons why a company offering transcription services should have a house style: first of all as a guide to good spelling and grammar, and to streamline the process of deciding between correct alternatives; and secondly, to differentiate your company from others with respect to visual presentation. For instance, unless otherwise indicated, the template will include the transcription company’s logo as either header or footer, and the heading style will be uniform for all transcripts. The page layout, line spacing, font and paragraph style can be specified, so that a series of transcripts of interviews will match in appearance even when produced over a long time frame.

With regard to alternative spellings, even one transcriptionist working on one document may inadvertently come up with a variety of versions of the same word or punctuation (e.g. double quotes/single quotes) all of which are perfectly correct. The result will be more professional if you can come to some agreement over consistency. Where everyday speech is being recorded, a frequent occurrence is ‘okay’ or ‘OK’. Particularly when a conversation is very long and has to be transcribed by more than one person, a sudden change from one usage to the other will stand out like a sore thumb. Another very common problem is how to render ‘cos’ for ‘because’. Do you transcribe it in full whatever the style of the speaker? Put an apostrophe in front, or not? ‘Et cetera’ – in full, or shortened to ‘etc’? How will you standardise things like ‘um’, ‘er’, or a non-verbal agreement such as ‘mm’/‘hmm-mm’, or ‘uh-huh’/’aha’? A simple transcript can become a minefield of tiny decisions.

Producing transcripts for private use, it may not be absolutely necessary to follow all the practices of a publishing house, but an awareness of these standards will give added value. The styling of numerals in text is an example that comes up all the time. Normal practice is to put the numbers up to and including either ten or a hundred in words, and after that in figures. If this is specified in the house style, another burden is lifted from the typist. Yet again, the transcriptionist may not be aware of the correct styling of titles of books, magazines, films, TV programmes, etc. These should be in italics, not in quotes. If the client is intending to quote parts of the transcript in a published work, these little touches will be much appreciated.

Alternative spellings – if you consult the publishers’ bible, The Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors, there is a preferred version of many of these. Because American English is now so widespread, we hardly notice American spellings creeping into our transcripts. The most prevalent example is ‘licence’/’license’ and ‘licensing’/’licencing’ – the correct usage is exactly the opposite in America and the UK.

Sadly, we all make mistakes, and the House Style is a good opportunity to remind everybody of the pitfalls. Common bloomers include ‘cant’ for ‘can’t’, ‘loosing’ for ‘losing’, ‘quite’ for ‘quiet’, ‘affect’ and ‘effect’ used in the wrong context – you could go on forever!

Everyone assumes that transcribing an audio recording is easy. You just type what you hear, right? Not necessarily. When transcribing an interview or focus group not only do you have to transcribe accurately what’s been said, you also have to punctuate it in such a way that allows the reader a true understanding of how the speech was spoken.

A good ear is an essential attribute for a transcriptionist, as the quality of recordings can vary dramatically. You can have the interview conducted in a café with the chinking of cups and chatter of others completely unrelated to the interview, which you have to block out, and which makes it very difficult to decipher what is being said by the interviewer and interviewee. You can also have strong regional accents and dialects that need to be accurately transcribed, as well as technical terminology depending on the subject matter of the interview. It’s amazing how difficult it is to decipher a word or phrase that has no meaning to you.

Sound quality can be supplemented by some industry-specific headphones and a high-spec sound card for the PC, but an ear for accents and languages is invaluable as a transcriptionist.

The ability to spell, along with an excellent knowledge of grammar and punctuation, is also a significant requirement. Take the sentence, “I was telling her that you know the place at the end of the street”, reads very differently when punctuated as the speech was spoken, “I was telling her… you know the place at the end of the street?” The same sentence, but punctuated accurately, allows the reader to follow the meaning of the sentence. Knowing how to accurately punctuate unnecessary interjections and to use ellipses correctly is one of the main things we look for when recruiting to our transcription team.

Patience and tenacity! Okay, technically two ingredients, but they tend to come together. We recently undertook a piece of work where Norwegian oilfields were the topic of conversation. Unfortunately the client didn’t supply us with a glossary of terms or names and we were left to our own devices. Rather than have a document which was full of “inaudibles” we took to the web, determined to track down the spellings for these unpronounceable names. And, do you know what, there are quite a few websites out there listing the names of all the Norwegian oilfields! By carefully listening to the speaker we were able to research the various place names and transcribe the text accurately - with all the correct spellings. It was quite an achievement, and we were very pleased with ourselves at doing such a good job with a subject that was totally alien to us. Whether or not the client was impressed, we’ll never know.

A good typing speed is therefore not necessarily one of the main things we look for when hiring new transcriptionists. Transcribing something quickly doesn’t necessarily mean it has been transcribed well.

This is why, when recruiting new transcriptionists to our transcription service team, we have a test recording that isn’t of the best recording quality and has two quite strong regional accents. It means that we can assess a potential new transcriptionist’s ability to handle these challenges and ascertain whether or not they possess the three main ingredients to being a good transcriptionist.

Trying to decide if you should have your precious interview recordings transcribed by someone else is a big decision to make. There are definitely pros and cons with regards to getting a transcription company to transcribe your recordings and there are considerations to take into account before deciding the best way to proceed.

Obviously the first thing to consider is cost. If you transcribe them yourself it won’t cost you anything other than your time. However, with prices starting from around 90p per recorded minute, it may not cost as much as you think and it will save you a lot on time and effort. It’s worth remembering that a one hour recording will take in the region of 6 - 8 hours to transcribe and proof and the cost to have it done professionally may far outweigh the advantages of saving on cost in respect of the time it will take you to transcribe them yourself.

Who is going to be undertaking the transcription? Again, you need to ensure that the transcription team are suitably qualified. The best transcription companies have a stringent recruitment policy and you need to find out if the team are professional transcriptionists or if the company use students and part-time home workers to fulfil its obligations. If this is the case, the cost may be cheaper but, is there a quality control procedure in place to ensure that the completed transcripts meet the standard you require?

Another consideration is confidentiality. Ensuring that your subjects’ confidentiality is maintained is of great importance. But, by doing your research when recruiting a transcription company, you can select a company that operates a Client Confidentiality Policy and Procedure and who will sign a non-disclosure agreement if required.

What about equipment? If you don’t have the necessary transcription software, foot pedal and industry standard headphones it will make the transcription of the recordings a long and tedious task. However, purchasing the necessary equipment can cost in the region of £250 - £350, that could be 388 minutes of transcription completed by someone else!

There’s also the argument that a researcher can’t really analyse the transcription properly unless they’ve transcribed it themselves. However, by instructing a verbatim transcript, you will retain all the speech and nuances from the recording to ensure that you can analyse it fully.

Alternatively, by instructing an intelligent verbatim transcription, the transcriptionist will o drop out any unnecessary speech, non-verbal speech events and interjections, making the document much easier to read, direct and to the point.

Finally there’s time. If you transcribe the recordings yourself that could take quite a while to complete. By instructing a professional transcription company they will have a large team readily available to undertake your transcriptions. They will be able to assign a team of transcriptionists to your project and to turn the project around within a very short timescale. Obviously, the quicker you need them the more expensive it will be but if a 5 - 10 day turnaround is sufficient for your requirements, you can be conducting further interviews, or starting your analysis process, safe in the knowledge that the transcriptions are being completed to your requirements.

You’ve been busy, you’ve interviewed twenty people and now you have to transcribe the recordings for analysis. Easy. Or you’d think so! Transcription of audio recordings is quite a specialised skill and takes substantially longer than people anticipate. On average, for an experienced transcriptionist, a one hour interview recording will take four hours to transcribe - if it’s a good clear recording - with another two hours proofing time. 6 hours for each recorded hour! And, if it’s a focus group, you can add another two - four hours onto the timeline.

Let’s add this up - for an experienced typist that’s now 120 hours’ worth of work to transcribe these recordings. 20 solid days of work, if everything goes smoothly. How long it will take someone who isn’t so familiar with a keyboard doesn’t bear thinking about!

You also need specific transcription equipment. Trying to start and stop your little hand held Dictaphone to capture accurately what has been said is extremely time consuming - especially if you have to rewind it again and again to accurately decipher what someone has said.

By this point you’re probably at screaming point and trying to write up the transcription from your notes and memory. All that important data being compromised.

By using professional transcription services you are going to ensure that you get the possible transcription of your interviews, preserving your most important data. Transcription companies and agencies have a readily available team of professional transcriptionists waiting to undertake this work on your behalf.

They have all the necessary equipment for the job - specific transcription software and foot pedals that plug into the PC and let the transcriptionist play, stop, fast forward and rewind the recording without taking their hands off the keyboard. Also, industry specific headphones and file conversion and enhancement software to deal with the interviews conducted in a café on a busy Saturday afternoon.

They can also share the interviews out amongst their team to turn the project round in super-fast time. Imagine, all your transcripts back and ready to analyse in less than a week. You also don’t need to wait until you’ve undertaken all your interviews, you can send them through as you do them so that you can be analysing the first of the interviews while the final few are being transcribed.

With prices started from 90p per recorded minute the cost of transcription need not break the bank. Many companies offer student discounts and some institutions offer grants to assist with the transcription of data.

Many transcription companies offer safe and secure file transfer systems so that you can upload your sound files to them - no need for postage costs or the worry that data will get lost in the post. The better companies will also have an online facility to let you manage, track and store your sound files and associated transcripts.

All in all, utilising the service of an outside transcription company is going to save you time, money and stress. Let the people who know what they are doing do their job, so you can get on with yours.

People assume that transcription of audio recordings into printed documents is easy and can be done by anyone. In fact, there’s quite a bit of skill involved in producing an accurate transcription.

Here’s 5 facts you might not know about the audio transcription industry

A one hour interview can take between 4 and 6 hours to transcribe depending on the quality of the recording. It can take another 1 – 2 hours to proof the document. If it’s a focus group of 4 or more speakers, it can take 6 to 8 hours to transcribe and another 2 – 3 hours to proof.

Recording devices can be quite proprietary – with some digital recording devices only allowing audio transcription files to be transcribed by specific software. However, when buying transcription software it’s worth investing a bit more and selecting software with an inbuilt file conversion system. That way no matter the recording medium, you can always transcribe it, or convert it for transcription.

Not all transcription companies use students and non-skilled home workers to undertake transcription. Reputable transcription companies will only recruit the very best of professional transcriptionists to their team. They will also be appropriately security checked and normally native to the country where the company is based.

It’s not easy to distinguish multiple voices who are all talking at once! To assist in the transcription of groups of four or more speakers it’s always worth:

• Getting everyone to introduce themselves at the beginning so the transcriptionist can take notes to help her identify the individual speakers later on.
• Taking a log of who is speaking when and provide this to the transcriptionist
• Lead the conversation and try to encourage the speakers to take turns and not talk over themselves
• Utilise a good quality, multi-directional microphone when recording focus groups. Very often those furthest away from the mic can’t be heard clearly so you could risk not capturing anything they might say
• If possible use two, or even three, recording devices for large groups. This way, if one device doesn’t pick up a particular speaker the other will have.

Professional transcription companies want to provide you with the best possible transcription of your recordings. They understand how important this data is and will do their utmost to ensure you have a complete and accurate account for analysis purposes. They will operate a Quality Control Policy and Procedure and will work with you closely to ensure that the service you receive exceeds your expectations.

When starting with audio typing it’s well worth getting the right equipment.There are lots of different digital software packages available - some of them free. 1st Class use the StartStop Universal Digital Transcription System and have done so for a number of years. As it has an inbuilt digital file conversion process it allows us to transcribe all manner of weird and wonderful file types.Another massive plus point for the StartStop Universal Digital Transcription System is that it allows you to set the left foot pedal to timestamp any inaudible sections. This is a great time saver for all transcriptionists and with the flick of a toe you have entered a comment and the appropriate time onto the Word document so that the client is able to double check what we have been unable to decipher. To do this by hand is time consuming and tedious and this function within the StartStop Universl Digital Transcription Software makes it our favourite by far.

The other regularly used software is the free to download ExpressScribe. Although we don’t use it within the office a few of our home-based transcriptionists do use it and think it’s a great piece of free software. It’s available from NCH Switch NCH Switch.

You also need a USB foot pedal which plugs into the your PC and allows you to control the digital sound file as you transcribe. An absolute must. Who wants to start, stop, pause and rewind a digital sound file either by using the mouse or keyboard hotkeys? Arrggghhh!

A decent pair of headphones should also be on your shopping list. The old style transcriptionists headphones which normally come with the foot pedal are pretty inadequate. We use and love the Sennheiser PXC150 headphones. They have a nifty little “noise reduction” facility which you can switch on and it blocks out background noise around you, lifts the sound of the digital recording and cancels out any white noise on the recording. We wouldn’t be without them.

That’s all you need to get started – although a good ear for accents never goes wrong!

Take your time, proof your document thoroughly and make sure that you have punctuated the speech to give a true reflection of how it was spoken.

At 1st Class we are often asked the best style to use when audio transcribing an interview. This depends on the type of interview and what the transcribed document will be used for:

Dictation
This is usually one person speaking, dictating letters, reports, minutes or giving a presentation. For this we will lay the document out in the most appropriate or requested format and tidy up the speech so that it is punctuated properly and that the sentences make sense.

Verbatim Transcripts
Normally used for police interviews, court hearings, in-depth analysis interviews these transcripts include everything. Every “um”, “ah”, hesitation, non-verbal speech event [coughs], [background noise] are included. This can make for difficult reading but is important - especially in DVD recordings where some of the speech is replaced by nods, shrugs or shakes of the head. It would also highlight how the speech was spoken [loudly], [quietly]. These are important indicators for these types of interviews.

Intelligent Verbatim Transcripts
For less in-depth research interviews we would recommend the intelligent verbatim layout. This drops out the “ums”, “ahs”, hesitations and any other non-relevant speech. This makes for a much more readable document which highlights the main points and makes for a much easier analysis.

Focus Groups
Probably the hardest transcription style to do well. Many voices - four or more - all talking at once and very often indistinguishable. Sometimes it is only possible to identify the speakers by M or F and to break a change in speakers by inserting a paragraph break.

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